Love Isn't Enough
by Sarsel
Summary: Rayna takes a serious look at her behaviour and figures out where she went wrong. The question is is whether the consequences of her actions will be bearable.
1. Chapter 1

**Hi Everyone. I'm definitely feeling the lack of stories right now, but loving the quality of what everyone is posting! Thank you everyone is putting themselves out there to get us through this hiatus. I decided I should dust off some of the random little bits I've been working on. If anyone wants to workshop ideas or chat, then shoot me a PM. This will be at least a 2 chapter story, but possibly a bit more. This chapter is all Rayna's thoughts the night before the wedding but I've got some action and dialogue coming for the next one. Thanks everyone. -Kristy**

Think of the way he looks at you.

In the tiny space of Rayna's mind that wasn't being rocked like a row boat in a hurricane, she thought about Tandy. How could a person know you so well and still have absolutely no idea that she'd said the exact wrong thing? Tandy had spent her entire adult life eagerly giving Rayna advice and Rayna listened to it all. She only had a handful of people she could trust like her sister, but more often than not it felt like Tandy was quoting a bad script to a stranger.

Any other bride before any other wedding needed to hear that love was enough. Never in Rayna's life had love been enough and 16 years earlier Tandy had been sitting with a teary pregnant bride the night before the first wedding with the exact opposite speech. He'll be an excellent father; He loves you; You're doing the right thing. Because even Tandy wasn't that blind.

Why did Tandy think she could say 'focus on the love' now and that everything else would fall into place?

Love hadn't been enough to keep her and Teddy happy together when things got rough. The closest it had come was by way of their love for their girls and their true desire to provide them with a home and a family. That love hadn't been enough.

Love had never been enough for her and Deacon either. Love couldn't keep him sober or stop them from yelling. Love may have made their daughter, but it hadn't built them a home or a family or the future together that they'd so desperately wanted. Love hadn't been enough to keep them safe in a rolling SUV or mend the hurt feelings after 16 years of lies. Some other force had healed those, somewhat, but it surely wasn't their love for one another.

Now more and more Rayna was feeling this enormous gulf between her and Luke. She couldn't quite nail it down but she thought of how his eyes flickered the night of the CMAs. It gave her the hollow feeling she'd had when Teddy said that he loved her because she dazzled him. He meant it, and he thought that's what she wanted to hear. Luke had been doing the same thing, only she's feeling more and more like maybe he didn't understand what she meant about the difference between the CMAs and real life. Luke was dazzled. It's getting scary to think that maybe all the show is Luke's real life and she erred in assuming that his comfort with fame was the result of him knowing something she doesn't or of being better at the game than she is. Maybe he's walking around not feeling torn in half because he's not trying to keep a foot in two worlds.

Rayna eyed her mostly full wine glass and deliberately picks it up and pours it down her bathroom sink. She can barely follow her thoughts right now and her need to think clearly tonight is undeniable.

She knows that you can live happily while pretending for quite awhile, right up until the moment you absolutely can't anymore. That's when car's flip off the road and divorces are asked for. That's when the little and big lies all pile on top of one another.

She knew when she was 16 that an authentic life was worth any sacrifice over one that was nothing but show and spectacle. When had she forgotten that?

The way that he looks at you. Yea, Luke looks at her with love but it's not his eyes that Rayna can picture so clearly in her mind. It's not his eyes that see everything inside her. Luke looks at her and while she knows he is truly genuine in his feelings for her, she's feeling more and more like it's not …. enough? not right? not real?

He had made it so easy for her to say yes to everything because he was always that step ahead of her, reaching out a hand. He wanted them to date publicly, he wanted a serious commitment, he asked her to marry him after barely a few months of dating. She said yes to everything, but let him carry her along like a river.

With absolute clarity she remembered that same feeling from her wedding to Teddy. The sense that she'd arrived at this place under the power of forces that she hadn't controlled. Consequences and pushed her and people had nudged her and she was too exhausted from swimming against the current to not grab Teddy's hand.

When was the last time she'd swam?

Running out of the Bluebird, grabbing Deacon's car keys. Reckless and stupid and not watching the road.

Then she woke up in a hospital, unable to speak and so deeply ashamed of herself when she saw the terror on her daughter's faces. She hadn't trusted herself since then.

She'd turned all her focus on to her career, where she felt sure footed and powerful, and just abdicated all control of her private life to the handsome charismatic kind man who had made his move at the right time.

She hadn't dealt with that accident at all. She hadn't dealt with herself at all. She just ran faster and faster, hoping that she could out run her own mistakes and instead she was hours away from making even bigger ones. Now she knew she had screwed up horribly. She'd hurt people she loved and was about to do a whole lot more of it. She had been selfish and irresponsible and wilfully blind. That was going to have to end right now.

She couldn't marry Luke. She wasn't going to marry Luke.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2! I'm so excited that my normal story abandonment problem seems to be under control. This story jumps around a bit, and isn't very action packed but at least it's moving. More to come. Also any thoughts or advice on how to format text message dialogue? I tried to use ellipses but they weren't working. I went with underlining instead. thoughts? alternatives?**

By the time Rayna was off the ranch she had stopped sobbing. Once she was sailing down the rural highway she was breathing again. Her foot set the pace and her hands guided the wheel around gentle sloping turns and for the first time in over a year she felt safe and strong.

"_I'm leaving you for Tennessee,_

_I've got demon's riding shotgun but what they don't know_

_Is that I'm, I'm Already Gone"_

Adrenaline was pumping in her blood and she felt like she'd lept off a cliff and only after, realized she could glide safely down to the ground.

Before she reached Nashville, it occurred to her that she could drive anywhere. She had more than half a tank of gas, her purse was on the passenger seat and she was pretty sure she had a hat stashed in the back if she needed to hide her face and sun glasses strapped to the viser above the steering wheel to hide her red rimmed eyes. She could drive anywhere on the continent if she wanted. Her heart swelled at the freedom and then she focused to where she truly wanted to be.

She could drive up to the cabin, grab the spare key she knew was hidden under the flower pot. She'd wondered if it would be there when she had gone up there with Luke and sure enough, the spare key was right where Deacon had first hidden it over 20 years previously.

The cabin wasn't the right choice though. For one, Luke knew exactly where it was and basic female intuition said that hiding out alone at your ex's isolated cabin where your very angry, jilted ex-fiance could easily find you, wasn't a smart plan. The second reason was that she quite simply had no right to be there. The cabin was Deacon's, and had been theirs, but she wasn't Deacon and she wasn't part of a 'them' at the moment, so that long wrap around patio and lake view were not something she was entitled to enjoy.

Rayna let out a long shuddering breath when she acknowledged she could drive straight up to Deacon's East Nashville home, have the car parked and be inside before a single photographer had heard that the wedding was off. She could be in his arms in twenty minutes if she decided to. She could sleep in his low bed with the window above the headboard and that incredibly warm wool blanket he must still have.

As fulfilling as that fantasy was, and as unconsciously as her SUV's speed had crept up at the thought, Rayna knew in her heart that she hadn't left Luke for Deacon. There was no way she could explain that to anyone, and no one would ever believe her or understand, but it was the truth. Actually, Deacon would understand. He would know what she meant the instant she opened her mouth but it wasn't going to add up in her favour with him. If she didn't leave Luke for him, then that meant nothing had really changed in the past few months and that Rayna and still chosen Luke over Deacon. She had still rejected Deacon and no cancelled wedding was going to fix that.

Clarity washed over her and for the first time that she could remember in a very, very long time Rayna knew who she was and what her priorities were. She would go home to her daughters, be their mother and work on guiding her little family through this pivotal day. She would tell Deacon that she wasn't getting married, in the way she should have told him that she was getting a divorce from Teddy. He deserved that news from her, if not in person that at least from her and not a tabloid, or even worse, a phone call from a reporter.

Bucky would be there and the rest of the team at Highway 65. She would trust them to work hard and do whatever they could to protect the label and her career, but her primary focus was going to be with her family and the things she knew to be true.

Four hours later, the media damage was still piling up. The girls were sitting in the living room doing homework and each keeping an ear on the conversation going on in the Dining Room. Rayna had left three messages on Deacon's phone.

"Hey, you deserve to hear this from me directly. So pick up your phone ok? I can't leave my house right now but I really need to talk to you. Call me back."

She actually considered saying 'It's Rayna" on that last message.

It was a week before she heard back from him.

The crush of photographers outside her gate had lessened somewhat, but there were always at least two guys with cameras waiting during the day, hoping to make a car or alimony payment with one shot. Thankfully they were often gone by sunset, because a picture of her taken through a wind shield, driving in the dark was a lot less valuable.

Deacon hadn't returned any of her first batch of calls, and after the second day she stopped making them for awhile. Video of Luke and Deacon brawling on his front lawn had gone viral and frankly she was embarrassed by the situation. She also know that pestering Deacon at a time like this wasn't going to get her anywhere if he was as angry as he seemed while bashing in Luke's face. But after a few days of silence and she couldn't wait anymore. She tapped out a text to him, her phone lightly buzzing after each letter.

Are we ever going to talk again?

Three minutes and 40 seconds late the phone chirped in her hand.

Ray, I have no idea what we would say

She took that in, the weariness inherent in his words and the sweet relief she felt that they were communicating again. She replied immediately.

I've got a few things to say

The silence stretched after she sent that one. She could almost hear him thinking across the city, thinking the next thing she'd read on her phone is him saying 'That's what I'm afraid of'. Instead she got,

Can you come over here or should we meet somewhere else?

She had her shoes and coat on in less than a minute and didn't reply to him until she'd started the truck's engine.

On my way


	3. Chapter 3

**Late night writing binge! Chapter 3. Final Chapter. Hope you all enjoy. Thank you for the comments. -Kristy**

In deference to security and at the expense of the eagerness she felt, Rayna took a slightly circuitous route on her way to East Nashville. Her eyes constantly flickered up to the rear view mirror to see if anyone was following her.

When she arrived on Deacon's block, she parked several houses down. She knew that this increased her visibility and the odds of someone getting a clear picture of her, but it also reduced the chances of someone recognizing her vehicle in the first place. Before she got out of the truck, she wrapped her neck in a thick wool scarf and wrapped the last loop up over her ears. It wasn't quite that cold out but a December wind was blowing. Eight days ago she had been spending eighteen hours a day planning an outdoor wedding. It was just one of so many foolish decisions she'd made.

Here goes another one.

She knocked on his door and the wind seemed to die down and all their was was stillness until the latch on the door turned, and there he stood. He was wearing a thin flannel shirt and jeans and tired lines around his eyes.

"Hey" she said.

He just looked at her for a second, almost sadly, before stepping back to fully open the door and gesturing for her to come inside his warm house.

She stepped and unwound her scarf from her neck as Deacon closed the door behind her and stepped into the living room. He didn't say a thing, just sat down on the couch, elbows on knees and his face in his hands as he looked at her. She looked right back, then broke eye contact and sat down on the chair across from him and unconsciously mirrored his posture.

She took a deep breath and remembered that despite everything else they were, they had always been friends, especially when they didn't know what else they were.

"So" she started. "How has your week been?"

Deacon's cheek twitched as he almost smiled. "Pretty shitty actually. You?"

Rayna looked up at the ceiling as she thought it through to give him an honest answer.

"It's been rough. But I feel okay. Better than I have in a while actually. I don't feel quite so…" She took a long breath and rethought her words. "Everything feels simple now, even if it's not at all."

Deacon nodded slowly at that. "I bet."

"How's your face? Sorry about that by the way" Rayna continued, looking a little squeamish.

That did make Deacon smile, a big open mouth grin that showed teeth. "Best part of my week." he said, as they both know that Decon and left the superstar in much worse shape.

Rayna cringed at the memory of Luke's purple face appearing on every screen in her home that past week. Paparazzi had gotten photos of him heading towards his plane the next morning. He'd been wearing sunglasses but they weren't enough to hide the damage Deacon had done. She couldn't judge Deacon too harshly though; She knew both men had brutal tempers and quick fists and that Luke had shown up looking for a fight. She also knew it wasn't the first time punches had been thrown between them.

It was all just more pain that she was guilty for.

Then she groaned as the remembered something even worse.

"What?" Deacon asked.

Rayna had her eyes covered by her hands when she replied.

"He's going to have to get that damn tattoo removed or covered up too."

Her eyes peeked over her hands and looked at him, waiting for a smirk and maybe some dark laughter to break through this ice.

Instead he just stared at her, looking tired and sad.

"Rayna. What the hell?" He didn't mean about the tattoo; Luke was the least shy man in Nashville and everyone knew that her name, trademarked font included, were inked up Luke's left forearm. Deacon meant what the hell were you thinking? What the hell are you going to do? What the hell is wrong with you?

She'd said the same thing in the same tone to him back at the cabin when she thought he'd been drinking. It was the sound of totally unsurprised disappointment.

It was the most crushing thing she'd ever heard.

And that's when she started to sob.

It wasn't the angry grief she'd felt after her father died, but a deep well of sorrow over how thoroughly she had become lost and how much pain she had deliberately piled on top of herself and the people she loved. It built slowly, starting with her gasping for breath that wouldn't come. She couldn't breath and she sounded like she was choking. Tears began to roll down her face and her chest heaved. She folded up into herself and then after several failed attempts she managed to speak.

"I fuc….I fucked up" She murmured in a tiny voice as her whole torso convulsed. She wiped at her wet eyes and blinked repeatedly, trying to get herself together. "I fucked up so bad." and that unleashed the true torrent of tears.

She couldn't see through her clenched eyes but she felt him wrap his arms gently around her waist and she clung to him and buried her face in his neck as she wailed. She squeezed him as tightly as she would one piece of solid earth in the middle of hurricane. He held her back just as tightly as everything came rushing out of her.

She was spinning and rolling and tumbling in that SUV. She couldn't breath and she couldn't stop it. She keened and cried and it felt like she was screaming through shredded vocal cords again. She reached for him and this time he was there, holding her, making soothing sounds, sometimes humming deep in his chest so she could feel it vibrate through her. When the rolling stopped and her tears settled, she kept gasping for air and he never let go of her. She turned her head to rest it on his shoulder, wiping her wet face on his sodden shirt.

They stayed like that together in the armchair long past the time when her breaths came smoothly and calmly. Their arms relaxed their grip on each other but didn't move. Deacon rocked her gently and stroked her back and they sat there in the long silence. Neither of them wondered when it should end.

But then Deacon began to disentangle them, pulling his arms free and pushing her gently back. He reached up and took her face in his hands and wiped her cheeks free of tears with his thumbs. His eyes darted down to her lips but before Rayna's heartbeat could spike he was gently whispering something in a voice that revealed he too had been crying.

"You've got to go now Ray"

Rayna drew a shaky breath and nodded. She was cracked wide open and destroyed and she heard in his voice everything she had said to him before the third trip to rehab: I love you, I care for you, You need to do this babe.

She looked up at him and asked in a small voice "Will you be there?" Will you wait for me…. again? Can I build myself back up with some hope for the future? Will my salvation for working on my deeply flawed self be found with you?

She didn't hear the magnitude of Deacon's pause and she heard exactly what she wanted to in his answer.

"I always have been."

Rayna tried to smile and managed to pick herself up and walk out of Deacon's house and back to her truck. Deacon watched her go and prayed that he would be there, that he would have a chance to love her again.

That it would be enough.


End file.
